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I’m
writing on behalf of the No Glory campaign; important not just because we’re
commemorating something from the near past, the First World War, in a
particular political and cultural way, but because the particular way in which
we are doing this has an umbilical link to the present.

For
the dynamics that create war nowadays, are, in many cases similar to those that
sparked the First World War - expanding markets and the building of empire -
with the blood of the Middle East continuing to flow from the tricky arteries
of the Versailles conference. (Bodily imagery comes easily as the First World
War has such a visceral place in our collective memories, with suffering caused
by a fusion of modern killing machinery and brutal command.)

I
grew up in Britain’s post WW2 welfare state, and most of us knew that that war
was wrong. Art helped us to see this. Oh
What a Lovely War, that fine BBC TV series ‘The Great War’, and later Blackadder
gave us an analysis that could neither justify it nor see it as a victory. So
why, we ask, have the current jingo style celebrations staged by our Government
taken over for the centenary year? I think it best at this point to turn to the campaign's open letter, now signed by thousands
and spearheaded by many celebrated names last May.

2014 marks the hundredth anniversary of the beginning
of the First World War. Far from being a "war to end all wars" or a
"victory for democracy", this was a military disaster and a human
catastrophe.

We are disturbed, therefore, to hear that David
Cameron plans to spend £55,000,000 on "truly national commemorations"
to mark this anniversary. Mr. Cameron has quite inappropriately compared these
to the "Diamond Jubilee celebrations" and stated that their aim will
be to stress our "national spirit".

That they will be run at least in part by former
generals and ex-defence secretaries reveals just how misconceived these plans
are.

Instead we believe it is important to remember that
this was a war that was driven by big powers' competition for influence around
the globe, and caused a degree of suffering all too clear in the statistical
record of 16 million people dead and 20 million wounded.

In
2014, we and others across the world will be organising cultural, political and
educational activities to mark the courage of many involved in the war but also
to remember the almost unimaginable devastation caused.

That letter presents an almost Haiku
version of what we are about, (you can sign it at noglory.org) but for the
fuller history, our publication ‘No Glory
- The Real History of the First World War’ by Neil Faulkner explains the
step by step process that led to a catastrophe that was not in the interests of
those forced to fight. I quote:

‘Passchendaele. Let it
stand for hundreds of other industrialized battles…on the western front…’
‘Battles on a similar scale on the Eastern Front, between Russians, Germans,
and Austrians...’ ‘Battles in the
Alps, where half a million Italians perished…’ ‘…in Macedonia between Serbs,
Bulgars, and Greeks…’…‘on the Gallipoli peninsula between Briton, Australian
and Turk…’ ‘…in the snow of the Caucasus
Mountains, where Turkish peasant conscripts fought Russian peasant
conscripts…and in the deserts of Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine, where Turkish
conscripts fought dockers from East London, sheep hands from New Zealand, and
farmers from Punjabi villages…and in Africa, where 100,000 black porters were
worked to death in a white man’s’ war.’

In short, ‘a world gone mad.’ Our campaign also draws heavily on the arts events; poetry, music, theatre, debates and art exhibitions which are changing people’s relationship to the First World War back to what it was in the sixties.

It would seem that our activity has been
far more powerful than the revisionist tomes by historians presenting various
nuances of justification.

But why go to all this trouble? It’s gone
– no? In the past – no? This history, although not technically living history
any more, is as alive as the
Flanders mud was for decades after the flesh of our relatives stopped
interacting with the bio-organisms of mud.

I learned this stunning fact from a modern
conflict archaeologist who told me that Northern France has only been
considered as ‘dead mud,’ that is fit for excavation, since the 1990s. I don’t
write this gratuitously, but to feel its drama – and yes, poetry - for it makes
us closer to those murdered young men of all nationalities.

We are commemorating them on the evening
of August 4 in Parliament Square - the hundredth anniversary of Britain's
declaration of war on Germany. A leader in The Times in July 1914 stated:

'Who
then makes war? the answer is to be found in the chancelleries of Europe, among
the men who have too long played with human lives as pawns in a game of chess,
who have become so enmeshed in the formulas and jargon of diplomacy that they
have ceased to be conscious of the poignant realities with which they trifle.'

(Would that our current press and
establishment have such clarity.)

Our speakers and performers include actor
Samuel West, also of the Wilfred Owen Association, Kika Markham, Jeremy Corbyn
MP (who will evoke Kier Hardie's anti war speech of 1914) writer AL Kennedy
(reading Carol Ann Duffy's Last
Post in honour of Harry Patch as well as her 'letter to an Unknown Soldier') and Normandy veteran Jim Radford. Other
speakers represent the breadth of the No Glory campaign; Kate Hudson of CND,
Hannah Brock of the Quakers and Lindsey German of Stop the War. We also have
two historians with us, Neil Faulkner and Juliane Haubold-Stolle, German
curator of the current WW1 exhibition in Berlin who will be speaking in a
personal capacity.

Singers include Sean Taylor and Turkish
performer Gunes Cerit - poets Shareefa Energy and I-sis will evoke and remember
the Indian and African dead of this terrible imperialist war.

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